Scientist: Man in Americas earlier than  thought                  Archaeologists put humans in North America 50,000 years ago

                  By Marsha Walton and Michael Coren
                  CNN
                  Thursday, November 18, 2004 Posted: 2212 GMT (0612 HKT)

                  (CNN) -- Archaeologists say a site in
                  South Carolina may rewrite the
                  history of how the Americas were
                  settled by pushing back the date of
                  human settlement thousands of
                  years.

                  But their interpretation is already igniting
                  controversy among scientists.

                  An archaeologist from the University of
                  South Carolina on Wednesday
                  announced radiocarbon tests that dated
                  the first human settlement in North
                  America to 50,000 years ago -- at least
                  25,000 years before other known human
                  sites on the continent.

                  "Topper is the oldest radiocarbon dated
                  site in North America," said Albert
                  Goodyear of the University of South
                  Carolina Institute of Archaeology and
                  Anthropology.

                  If true, the find represents a revelation for
                  scientists studying how humans
                  migrated to the Americas.

                  Many scientists thought humans first
                  ventured into the New World across a
                  land bridge from present-day Russia into
                  Alaska about 13,000 years ago.

                  This new discovery suggests humans
                  may have crossed the land bridge into
                  the Americas much earlier -- possibly
                  during an ice age -- and rapidly colonized
                  the two continents.

                  "It poses some real problems trying to
                  explain how you have people (arriving) in
                  Central Asia almost at the same time as
                  people in the Eastern United States,"
                  said Theodore Schurr, anthropology
                  professor at the University of
                  Pennsylvania and a curator at the
                  school's museum.

                  "You almost have to hope for
                  instantaneous expansion ... We're talking
                  about a very rapid movement of people
                  around the globe."

                  Schurr said that conclusive evidence of
                  stone tools similar to those in Asia and
                  uncontaminated radiocarbon dating
                  samples are needed to verify that the
                  Topper site is actually 50,000 years old.

                  "If dating is confirmed, then it really does
                  have a significant impact on our previous
                  understanding of New World
                  colonization," he said.

                  But not all scientists are convinced that
                  what Goodyear found is a human
                  settlement.

                  "He has a very old geologic formation,
                  but I can't agree with his interpretation of
                  those stones being man-made," said
                  Michael Collins of the Texas
                  Archeological Research Lab at the
                  University of Texas at Austin. Collins
                  disputes that the stone shards at the site
                  show signs of human manipulation.

                  But whether the Topper site proves valid,
                  Collins said most archeologists now
                  believe people settled in America before
                  13,000 years ago, refuting a theory that
                  has held sway for 75 years.

                  Since the 1930s, archaeologists generally believed North America was settled by
                  hunters following large game over the land bridge about 13,000 years ago.

                  "That had been repeated so many times in textbooks and lectures it became part of
                  the common lore," said Dennis Stanford, curator of archeology at the Smithsonian
                  Institution. "People forgot it was only an unproven hypothesis."

                  A growing body of evidence has prompted scientists to challenge that assumption.

                  A scattering of sites from South America to Oklahoma have found evidence of a
                  human presence before 13,000 years ago -- or the first Clovis sites -- since the
                  discovery of human artifacts in a cave near Clovis, New Mexico, in 1936.

                  These discoveries are leading archaeologists to support alternative theories -- such
                  as settlement by sea -- for the Americas.

                  Worldwide, ideas about human origins have rapidly changed with groundbreaking
                  discoveries that humans ranged farther and earlier than once believed. Fossils in
                  Indonesia nearly 2 million years old suggest that protohumans left their African
                  homeland hundreds of thousands of years earlier than first theorized.

                  Modern humans, or homo sapiens, most likely emerged between 60,000 and
                  80,000 years ago in Africa. They quickly fanned out to Australia and Central Asia
                  about 50,000 years ago and arrived in Europe only about 40,000 years ago.
                  Ancestral humans -- hominids like australopithecines and Neanderthals -- have
                  never been found in the New World.

                  Goodyear plans to publish his work in a peer-reviewed scientific journal next year,
                  which is the standard method by which scientists announce their findings. Until
                  research is peer-reviewed, experts in the field may not have an opportunity to
                  evaluate the scientist's methods, or weigh in on the validity of his conclusions.

                  Archaeologists will meet in October of 2005 for a conference in Columbia, South
                  Carolina, to discuss the earliest inhabitants of North America, including a visit to the
                  Topper Site.

                  Goodyear has been excavating the Topper dig site along the Savannah River since
                  the 1980s. He recovered many of the artifacts and tools last May.

                  Goodyear dug four meters (13 feet) deeper than the soil layer containing the earliest
                  North American people and began uncovering a plethora of tools. Until recently,
                  many archeologists did not dig below where Clovis artifacts were expected to be
                  found.

                  Scientists and volunteers at the site in Allendale have unearthed hundreds of
                  possible implements, many appearing to be stone chisels and tools that could have
                  been used to skin hides, butcher meat or carve antlers, wood and ivory. The tools
                  were fashioned from a substance called chert, a flint-like stone found in the region.

                  Goodyear and his colleagues began their dig at the Topper Site in the early 1980s
                  with the goal of finding out more about the Clovis people. Goodyear thought it would
                  also be a good place to look for earlier human settlers because of the resources
                  along the Savannah River and the moderate climate.